Cart abandonment is one of the biggest hurdles e-commerce merchants face, no matter how creative, useful, innovative, or timely products or services are. Cart abandonment can lead to significant loss when customers add items to their online shopping carts and for one reason or another, decide not to complete the purchase. According to research done by the Baymard Institute, just under 30% of carts make it through the checkout process, indicating that this is all too common.
There are myriad reasons for cart abandonment, some of which are out of the merchant’s control, such as customers who are “just browsing.” On the other hand, for the most part, cart abandonment can be solved for by merchants adopting solutions that encourage customers to complete their transactions. The same study found that the average large e-commerce site can recoup cart abandonment loss with an increase of 35.26% in conversions – and a potential of a whopping $260 billion worth of lost orders – by implementing a better checkout flow and providing an optimized online shopping experience for your customers.
Below, we explore 10 solutions you can adopt to elevate your customer experience and decrease your cart abandonment rates.
- Optimize your checkout experience
It cannot be overstated enough – today’s customers don’t just want, but expect checkout to be fast, safe, and easy. Optimizing the checkout experience means removing friction and enforcing trust throughout the process, with top priorities tending to lean toward transparency, ease, and security. Our recent inaugural Paze Pulse◊ Report: Consumer Online Shopping Preferences conducted with Murphy Research found that an overly complicated checkout process and security concerns were among the top reasons for cart abandonment.
- Support trusted digital checkout solutions
The Paze Pulse◊ report found that nine-in-10 (91%) respondents reported frequent use of digital methods for checkout, such as keeping their card information stored with a merchant, within a web browser or using a digital wallet. Sixty-four percent of respondents value shopping online with retailers that offer multiple ways to pay. Giving customers the choice to pay through their trusted checkout solutions gives them fewer reasons to abandon their cart.
- Go a step further with a digital wallet
With 72% of consumers in the Paze Pulse report saying they highly value digital checkout tools like digital wallets to make online checkout easy – a number that will only grow in the future – it is interesting to note that a significant 75% said they manually input their payment information at checkout. This can be a time-consuming and error-prone process. Adding a digital wallet can often simplify this by removing the requirement of inputting full card numbers and expiration dates, lowering the risk of lost sales due to mistyped card information or consumer frustration due to tedious data entry.
- Create trust for your customers
Security is always top of mind for customers, especially when it comes to the online checkout. Two-in-three (67%) respondents to the Paze Pulse survey listed a secure checkout process as one of the top three most important factors they look for when shopping online. With online payment fraud on the rise – Juniper Research forecasts $91 billion in merchant losses in 2028 – it’s imperative that merchants support the most secure and up-to-date payment methods. Solutions using tokenization, which replaces the card’s number with a random one-time use “token” that represents the real card numbers, means lower risk of exposure to sensitive information.
- Remove the friction of new account creation
How many times have you gone to check out, only to be stopped by needing to create, confirm, and then login to a new account just to complete your purchase? You can avoid causing customers similar delays by offering a guest checkout option.
Supporting checkout options like a digital wallet also means customers can skip the painstaking process of new account creation. The Paze service enables easy account creation by allowing users to identify themselves with the email they use at their bank or credit union and authenticate with a one-time passcode. Then they confirm the information they wish to share with the merchant. Because this contact information comes from their financial institution, it has already been validated by their institution’s processes, which helps streamline the account creation process.
- Be transparent with any additional costs
According to the Baymard Institute study, extra costs such as taxes, fees, and shipping are the number one reason for cart abandonment, with 48% of respondents citing this. Transparency with final costs and what each line item stands for goes a long way with instilling even more trust with your customers and preventing that last-minute “sticker shock” reason for abandoning a cart.
- Optimize your website speed
The need for speed is the takeaway here. A Deloitte study found that 70% of consumers say slow-loading websites impact their willingness to buy online. Another study found that even four seconds makes a difference: a site loading in one second has a conversion rate three times higher than one that loads in five seconds. Conducting an audit and figuring out the ways you can optimize your page load speed – from deleting excessive third-party apps to ensuring proper hosting services – can influence how quickly your website performs.
- Create a personalized experience
The more digital the shopping experience becomes; the more customers desire tailored experiences that reflect their own personal preferences. McKinsey found that 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver these types of personalized interactions, with over 75% of them saying they get frustrated when they don’t have them. Personalized shopping experiences and product recommendations can influence customers’ behavior and encourages them to not only complete their purchases, but also come back for more.
- Support responsive design
We all know the numbers surrounding the importance of a mobile-first approach. A recent Morning Consult survey found that 61% of US adults find mobile shopping to be necessary for convenience, and EMARKETER forecasted that mcommerce sales are estimated to make up 44.6% of total U.S. retail e-commerce sales this year. This is why responsive design is more important than ever to ensure your customers can easily find what they want using the device they want to avoid the dreaded abandoned cart.
- Offer value over competitors
There is a benefit and drawback to the convenience of e-commerce shopping when it comes to comparison shopping. Customers can quickly compare products and services from different providers online, looking at different prices and brands. For merchants, comparison shopping can be a double-edged sword. You can get ahead of this by checking out your competition from time to time to confirm your prices are within reason – and even offer discount codes or shipping benefits to sweeten the deal.
The takeaway
Cart abandonment is an ongoing fight that all online merchants face. Luckily, there is an arsenal of solutions that can be used as impactful measures against it. Adopting effective methods to reduce your cart abandonment events can lead to better customer experiences, increased loyalty, fewer lost sales, and more profit for your company.
To learn more about Paze and how digital wallets can support cart abandonment solutions, contact us.
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